Utah Association of Counties: Commissioner Kent Wilson and Geri Gamber

○ Data

● Increase transparency and improve the impact and efficacy of rural incentives by drafting, supporting, and adopting legislation that will require agencies to report incentive use metrics. This will allow the GRPB, lawmakers, and taxpayers to understand the usefulness of incentives and focus on programs with strong returns on investment.

○ Incentives

● Complexity, competition, cycle time, subjectivity, low visibility, and redundancy all decrease the utilization of incentives. ● The constraints common among multiple incentives is that they are incenting the same thing, usually built capital and machinery, or alternatively hiring employees. The two primary “buckets”, or objectives, are capital (including infrastructure) and people. There are at least four incentives that reward companies for hiring people, and most of the incentives offer some compensation to businesses with real estate, building, or machinery needs. These incentives compete with other incentives, providing better or worse terms, and are sometimes mutually exclusive. The Community Impact Board, for example, can grant large amounts of money with little application and low cycle time, thus becoming a favored mechanism for rural infrastructure needs. Focusing and consolidating incentives so that one incentive targets built improvements, infrastructure, and/or machinery, and another targets job creation and hiring, is a stronger approach. ● Some incentives are complex, have long cycle times, few are well marketed, and multiple federal opportunities require an intermediary. Additionally, businesses struggle to see when or where an incentive applies to them (should they apply before or after they hire people?). Some incentives are ill-defined, i.e.,

Targeted Business Tax Credit. ● Boards that administer incentives, loans, and grants can be subjective. One example of subjectivity is the

Community Impact Board (CIB). Administrative rules can’t capture every event or unusual application but removing the politics and relationships from the administration would benefit the right projects, not just the right applicants. ● There are a variety of incentives that reward the attraction and expansion of businesses, but there are few aids for starting businesses. While there is more risk in early-stage ventures, the opportunity for smallscale, tourism-based entrepreneurial pursuits is growing, e.g. campgrounds, short-term vacation rentals, kayak/paddle board rentals, festivals, etc.

There are seven (7) associations of governments (AOGs) in Utah. These areas were originally designated as planning districts in the early 1970s. The AOG’s offer local government coordination of mutually beneficial programs and provides regional collaboration, cost-effective public services for area communities. The seven AOGs also act as economic development districts (EDDs). They help lead the locally-based, regionally driven economic development planning process that leverages the involvement of the public, private and non-profit sectors to establish a strategic blueprint for regional collaboration known as a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS).

● Challenges

○ Often the monitoring and rules put in place do not match the funding available. The AOG’s need more support to meet the demands of the program. ○ Rural County Program suggestions include streamlining process; ensure staffing can handle the issues/process. ○ It has become clear that the work between SEUALG & UAC requires expanded staff capacity to build upon the existing efforts of both organizations. With the financial support of SEUALG, UAC will be adding a Financial

Planner/Analyst.